Himalayan News Service

Amritsar, February 18:

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has done what Queen Elizabeth avoided in 1997. During his visit to the Jallianwala Bagh memorial here yesterday, Straw virtually apologised for the massacre of over 2,000 innocent unarmed Indian protestors at the hands of British troops on April 13, 1919. In the visitors’ book at the memorial — now a national monument in memory of those gunned down mercilessly on the orders of British General Reginald Dyer — Straw expressed his pain of the incident that took place almost 86 years ago.

He wrote, “This was a terrible occasion in which so many innocents were slaughtered, for which I feel shame and sorrow.” Straw wrote these remarks after paying floral tributes to the martyrs at the Jallianwala Bagh here. Reigning British monarch — Queen Elizabeth — had during a visit in 1997 avoided commenting on the massacre by British forces. She only signed the visitors’ book but never wrote any remarks.

Her husband — Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip — had stirred a hornet’s nest when he commented that a former British officer had told him that the number of those killed in 1919 was much less than the figures quoted. The statement had evoked a strong reaction in India and Britain.